Advocates of having public companies allow their owners to express their opinions on how much companies pay their top brass enter the 2009 proxy season with a head of steam.

“Say-on-pay” shareholder resolutions have been filed at more than 100 U.S. companies so far this season — including Apple, Yahoo, Intel and Hewlett-Packard — according to a network of more than 70 organizations established in 2007 known as the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.

“We’re pleased that a number of companies in the United States already have responded and their boards have agreed to institute an” advisory vote on executive pay in 2009, according to Timothy Smith, a senior vice president at Walden Asset Management, one of 11 asset management firms in the network, which includes public pension and labor funds, foundations, religious investors, retiree organizations and individual investors.

“We expect more companies to step forward this winter and declare their support, such as Hewlett-Packard did last week,” Smith said.

While HP did put out a news release on Jan. 16 saying that its board had decided to allow shareholders to “determine whether the company should conduct an annual nonbinding advisory stockholder vote related to executive compensation,” the vote on whether to allow a vote won’t take place until 2010, meaning that HP’s shareholders won’t be able to express satisfaction or lack thereof about executive pay until 2011, at the earliest.

“We have adopted this procedure because executive compensation involves important issues relating to corporate governance,” said Mark Hurd, HP chairman and chief executive.

Important, but not evidently urgent. HP’s timing allows the company to dodge the issue following a very good year for its CEO, which leads us to our next item:

AN HP BOO-BOO: One detail about Hurd’s compensation contained in the proxy filing HP made with the SEC on Tuesday drew some unwanted attention last week.

In addition to the $25.4 million in cash he got last year, the $7.9 million in stock-based compensation, the $98,000 in dividends he earned on his restricted stock and the $71,482 worth of mortgage assistance, the company said he was reimbursed $79,814 for taxes he paid for the imputed value of meals he received associated with business travel “in connection with events to which family members were invited.”

The figure reverberated around the blogosphere, with estimates about the value of the meal benefit on which the taxes were paid ranging as high as $243,000.

“How Much Does It Cost To Feed Mark Hurd?” was the headline of one post. “HP chief’s family sure likes to eat,” said another.

Hurd has undeniably turned HP around since he arrived in the spring of 2005, and he lit a fire under the company’s stock. He seems to be a hard worker, who rose through the ranks at NCR before being tapped for the top spot at HP. But nearly a quarter million for food?

It turns out the tax figure printed in HP’s proxy was a mistake. After inquiring about it, an HP representative told us the correct figure was $4,117. That would make the benefit worth about $10,000. That seems more like it.

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